African Wildlife and Environment Issue 64

GENERAL

CORPORATE MEMBERS

we can get at least one copy into every school in the country. Now that would be an achievement of note! One of the most successful monthly specialist magazines I know has a print version for subscribers and bookshelf sales, an electronic version that can be downloaded (for half the price of the printed version) plus a weekly electronic newsletter that helps boost the sales of the other two. Now here is a savvy publisher who has got all the bases covered! This is something else we should aspire to. We live in a world where politicians and the media speak glibly about ‘regular facts’ and ‘alternative facts’, and if you think about it, this is indeed the case in environmental issues such as hunting, climate change, nuclear energy and many more. I hope we will be able to bring you balanced views about the wonderful planet we live on, and that we will cover many aspects of natural history, protected areas, biodiversity and environmental education, while giving due space to the politics of the environment, which ultimately affects the long-term survival and viability of the biodiversity we value so much. The last issue of African Wildlife was Volume 63 No 2. We are simply going to number the new publication from 64 on. I am looking forward to working with the WESSA team to bring you an interesting magazine. I have previously served as the Content Editor for African Wildlife , so in many ways it feels like coming home.

The point I am trying to make is that in our fast-moving, electronic, instant access world, information can simply disappear, or become inaccessible. For example, take all my own old information that is locked up on dusty disk drives (‘floppies’ and ‘stiffies’) lying in a box somewhere in my office. I can’t access that data because the technology has moved on, and I don’t have a means of reading those disks. For all their showy features and glitz, electronic storage and retrieval systems are fallible, and the contents can disappear in a flash! I recently showed a couple of the Environment magazines to a top motor industry executive: “Those are beautiful” he said “but I don’t buy magazines anymore, I access them on my tablet”. This may be the view of the educated elites of South Africa, but there are millions of other people out there who value and cherish a printed magazine. Dr John Hanks told me that most of the schools in the rural areas of Limpopo Province are totally starved for information about wildlife and the environment, and any surplus magazines that are available from the Lapalala Wilderness School are eagerly grabbed by teachers and learners alike. The fact is that there are millions of South Africans, many of them young, who would appreciate and cherish a magazine like the one you are holding. In most cases they cannot afford to buy one themselves. In many cases it could be a story or a picture in a magazine that inspires a young person to follow a career in conservation, environmental science or agriculture, or other fields of caring for the earth. So here is the challenge thatWESSA needs to consider: let’s make African Wildlife & Environment magazine financially viable so that

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these”. George Washington Carver George Carver was a man who got an education through his own unending efforts. He was born into slavery about 1864. His mother was stolen when he was an infant. After the Civil War ended in 1865, he and his brother were raised by the white couple who had previously owned them ... life is always more curious than we can imagine. He went to school obsessively from childhood on, and after much frustration from the racism of the time he eventually earned a Master’s degree in botany. Among other things, he was very concerned with what the mono-cropping of cotton was doing both to the soil and to the people. For the soil, he was one of the earliest people to recommend crop rotation with nitrogen-fixing plants ... a practice that we followed on the ranch. I remember reading that he was an early advocate of that and being proud to be still following his prescient lead. Source: https:// rosebyanyothernameblog. wordpress.com/2017/02/01/ black-history-on-the-ranch/

SILVER BUSINESS SUPPORTERS Ewor (Pty) Ltd Land Resources International Panda Bamboo Products South African Sugar Association Super Stone Mining (Pty) Ltd Tswalu Kalahari Reserve

PLATINUM BUSINESS SUPPORTERS Afrisam South Africa (Pty) Ltd New Vaal Colliery/Anglo Operations (Pty) Ltd Rose Foundation Woolworths GOLD BUSINESS SUPPORTERS Arcelormittal South Africa Ltd, Newcastle Works Barberton Mines (Pty) Ltd Deloitte and Touche Derivco (Pty) Ltd Ecoguard Biosciences (Pty) Ltd Heartland Leasing (Pty) Ltd Hollard Life Assurance Company Idwala Lime ImproChem (Pty) Ltd Indian Ocean Export Company (Pty) Ltd Johnson and Johnson (Pty) Ltd Lake International Technologies (Pty) Ltd Leisure Development Company (Pty) Ltd NPC-Cimpor Oilkol (Pty) Ltd Old Mutual Orion Engineered Carbons (Pty) Ltd Pick ‘n Pay Transnet National Ports Authority of South Africa The Success Academy (TSA Properties) Sishen Iron Ore Company (Pty) Ltd Samancor Chrome Limited NGOs, WESSA is dependent on the generous support and donations from its corporate members. Here, we would like to acknowledge these companies for their contribution to caring for the Earth. As one of South Africa’s oldest and largest membership-based

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“I was recently presenting at a workshop of trainee rangers in Zululand and it’s amazing how they loved the magazine – it serves such a critical function”. Judy Mann-Lang, Conservation Strategist, South African Association for Marine Biological Research.

Dr John Ledger Consulting Editor john.ledger@wol.co.za

Selectech (Pty) Ltd Transnet Pipelines Sappi Limited

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